Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

VACATION TIME 19missionary says: " It would be easy to raise inChina an army of a million men — nay, of ten millions— tested by competitive examination as to theircapacity to go to sleep across three wheelbarrows,with head downwards like a spider, mouth wideopen, and a fly inside."Some of our own people seem totion out of anything but chasing afterget no satisfac^dollars withoutlet-up from year to year, save when they areasleep, or in church, or both. We recall a certainrich man who boasted that in the eighty-eight yearsof his career he had not once taken a vacation orwanted one. Naturally his way was the right way,and he proceeded to show "it. What right," askedhe, " has a clerk to demand or expect pay for twoweeks' time for which he renders no equivalent? Isitnot absurd to suppose that a man who can workeleven and a half months cannot as wtU work thewhole year ? The doctors may recommend a changeSickness isof air when he's sick; but why be sick?an irreparable loss of time." I am not misquotingthis very rich man: his signed pronouncement liesbefore me — the sorriest thing that ever I saw in9rint.Seriously, is it good for men and women and childrento swarm together in cities and stay there, keepstaying there, tilltheir instincts are so far pervertedthat they lose all taste for their natural element, thewide world out-of-doors? In any case, althoughevolution be a very great and good law, yet is it nota trifle slow? How about you and me? Can wewait a few thousand years for fulfilment of the wise(men's prophecy? We are neither coolies, nor mudturtles,nor those other things with the awful name.Granting, then, that one deserves relief now andthen from the hurry and worry that would age himbefore his prime, why not go in for a completechange while you are about it? Why not exorcisethe devil of business and everything that suggests it?The best vacation an over-civilized man can have if